We believe that if we're going to prosper, everyone has to have a fair shot, and everyone has to do their fair share. That's why I'm proud to lead the charge for the Buffet Rule, which makes sure that millionaires and billionaires don't get to pay a lower tax rate than middle-class families.

Baldwin said that Paul Ryan and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker "don't speak for all of Wisconsin," Baldwin said.

Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald said in a statement the positive numbers can be attributed to the “reforms” under Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican Legislature.

“We made the tough decisions required to balance our budget with the next generation in mind but it’s heartening to see our actions having an immediate positive impact on Wisconsin’s economy,” Fitzgerald said.

Fitzgerald also mentioned Wisconsin is “buck[ing] the national trend” by increasing revenues as well as having more people on payrolls.

Baldwin and her ilk still doesn't understand the difference between fair share and equal opportunity. Financial success staring her in the face and she still sees failure because that money was supposedly hers to distribute.

There are none so blind as those who choose not to see, or something along those lines.

Baldwin and her ilk still doesn't understand the difference between fair share and equal opportunity. Financial success staring her in the face and she still sees failure because that money was supposedly hers to distribute.

There are none so blind as those who choose not to see, or something along those lines.

The bird people say not to put food coloring in hummingbird feeders. It is not good for their little tummies.

Also, birds do not perceive colors like we do, and the little flowers and things on the feeders are for us, not the birds. The hummers smeell the sugar from far away and come for it with no colors at all.

I use Perky-Pet plastic tube feeders, small enough that I have to rinse and refill them before yeasts and nasty things start growing in them, and without the colorful strainers they come with, but just complicates things.

The bird people say to just make your own nectar with plain white sugar - 2 to 2½ cups of sugar to 4 cups of water (1 64 oz. bottle).

If you say to a democrat (or a pro-democrat media hack) – “If we lower tax rates, it will stimulate the economy and more revenue will flow to the treasury” Democrats and hack media will say each and every time... "It doesn't matter. We demand "fairness".The democrat definition of fairness is the destruction of the private sector with high punitive tax rates that give democrats power.

Obama and the democrats want a 39% rates on high income. Add to that higher capital gains taxes and higher corporate taxes. Add to that personal property taxes and sales taxes. Add to that the hidden taxes inside of ObamaCare... all the entitlement taxes…Then there's the 50% death tax that is a tax on top of what that has already been taxed.A clear attempt by the state to remove private businesses from families and force them to be sold.Again - a win for big government.

...Buffet Rule, which makes sure that millionaires and billionaires don't get to pay a lower tax rate

These days its cheap to be an evil millionaire. You only need to make $250,000/yr.

Big Government political types don't seem to comprehend the downside of increasing the cost of work and success. People really don't work hard to fund government, or subsidize losers (different than charity and feeding the poor). If you crank up taxes too much, these creative, productive people will re-organize their lives to avoid being society’s piggy bank. Then our economy will shrink, and there will be less money and fewer jobs overall – more pain for the average people. Stupid. Foolish.

Here in CA these projections are made by the Legislative Analyst's Office-the state version of the CBO-who is supposed to be non partisan. Their models are not dynamic enough. What seems to happen here is that they raise taxes and project X but collect 0.8X, leading to a revenue shortfall. I suppose that if they every cut a tax they would project losing Y and instead lose 0.8Y, leading to a revenue boost compared to projections.

I disagree somewhat. The root of the anger is envy, entitlement, and believed personal powerlessnes. That we need the power of the state to intervene. I think most such people could understand the economics perfectly, and still want to "get the rich".

I think at one level your Ms. Baldwin gets that millionaires can simply pick up their marbles and leave, if they so choose. Or they can invest in more creative accountants.

She's probably aware, at some level, that raising taxes can mean lower total revenues, but she's such an egotistical b*tch that she simply seethes with envy that people are smarter, and work harder, than she does, and that capitalism rewards that.

Shouting Thomas said... President Obama's first remarks in his speech last night echoed his frequent demand to raise taxes.

So, he refused again to walk away from the notion that taking more from private citizens and increasing the scope of government is the answer.

In 2008 and subsequent years, we heard about Obama's super intelligence. He was proclaimed the smartest man to ever be president (with evidence completely lacking for that assertion. Some even said Obama was “too smart for the job of president.” Actually, he isn’t intelligent at all.

One of the main tenants of intelligence is the ability to learn from experience and to apply those lessons to new situations. By his actions and proclamations, Obama proves he is incapable of learning from past failed economic policies. He keeps repeating the same failures again and again while expecting a different outcome. In addition to being unintelligent, this fits one definition of insanity. As a famous former general would say, Obama and the Democrats are “stuck on stupid.”

Obama may be "book smart" but only from leftist books. He isn't showing any signs of intelligence, much less wisdom.

A dem running for state assembly knocked my door yesterday. Typical lefty positions. I noticed on his little pamphlet that "We don't need Walker's tools" in Wauwatosa. I asked him what his alternative plan would be for the School District who overcame a multi-million budget deficit without dropping classes, teachers, or raising taxes using Walkers tools. He started the usual attacks on Walker and I stopped him and said, "I asked your plan" No answer. I asked what his plan would be to overcome the $3.6 billion state deficit without Walkers reforms. No answer.

This dumbshit actually believes he can succeed with strategy in District 14. I laughed at him and wished him good luck.

@MadMan, now I comprehend. The problem for you lefties is not that revenues were better than expected because of intelligent tax policy. Nope, the problem is for us righties that the Wisconsin projections were too low.

And you have the nerve to call yourself an educated man. Go back to kindergarten and start over.

Big Mike said... I think at one level your Ms. Baldwin gets that millionaires can simply pick up their marbles and leave, if they so choose. Or they can invest in more creative accountants.

She's probably aware, at some level, that raising taxes can mean lower total revenues, but she's such an egotistical b*tch that she simply seethes with envy that people are smarter, and work harder, than she does, and that capitalism rewards that.

Lefties do understand the risk of flight, and that's why they prefer Federal to State Government. That's why they prefer the EU to European States. That's why they want to grant the UN the right to tax. Larger scales limit the escape destinations and increase the cost of escape.

Leftists understand that socialists must control all jurisdictions to survive. If they don't the disparate economic performances will eventually create enough unrest that they'll be forced to change. That's why all criticism is met with insistence we must go further.

I put my feeders out in early April when the first travelers come passing through. The summer residents arrive in mid- to late April.They usually leave around the fall equinox (Sept. 23), but I keep the feeders out into the first week of October for late travelers from up north.

This year may be a little different. It seems like the residents already are leaving.It has been a hard summer.

I don't really have a problem with a modest tax increase on successful high income earners

Translation: "I don't have a problem with politicians taking from others to pay for shit I like." What a shock.

The whole debate is weird. People talk as if everyone's money is just the governments for the taking and that citizens should be grateful it doesn't take more. The reality is that citizens let the government collect revenue to performs its LIMITED (which has been pretty meaningless since at least the 1930's) enumerated powers.

We let it do things, not the other way around. Once you start thinking that the government lets citizens do things, you've all ready begun to lose your liberty and never get it back.

Middle class, even poor, people pay the identical capital gains rate on investment and the same rate on dividends as do George Soros and David Koch. Identical.

In fairness, middle class and poor don't utilize cap gains as income like Buffett or Soros. That said, many in the middle class and most all the poor pay very little to nothing in income tax.

Fact is, federal spending cannot be placed on the backs of only half the wage earners. Either everyone pays some % of income tax, or institute a VAT. Either way, the current spending level simply cannot continue even if Obama gets his tax increases.

I'd be fine with replacing income taxes with a VAT. But their not pitching the VAT as a replacement for income taxes, their pitching it as an add-on. At this point, we'd have to be idiots to open up another avenue for taxation without elimination of the old method.

"The bird people say not to put food coloring in hummingbird feeders. It is not good for their little tummies.

Also, birds do not perceive colors like we do, and the little flowers and things on the feeders are for us, not the birds. The hummers smeell the sugar from far away and come for it with no colors at all."

Middle class, even poor, people pay the identical capital gains rate on investment and the same rate on dividends...

Those flogging the Buffet Rule misrepresent the Payroll Tax so as to overstate the tax rate paid by lower earners. Unless ther plan is that SS taxes be withheld on every dollar of income -- so that Warren Buffett can receive a monthly SS check the size of Mel Gibson's alimony payments.

Marxism is so 19th century. When are the democrats going to get to the 21st century? Heck when Marx finally got around to publishing Das Kapital it was already seen then as obsolete and wrong. The democrats are always doing other people a favor with their money, but never them.

"What portion of the revenue should the top 10% pay?" or "What income level qualifies as 'rich'?"

Doesn't stymie me. And the way you phrase the question is deceptive. First of all only 1.5% (not the 10% you imply) of American families make more than 250K. The ten percent break is somewhere between 100 and 150K.

And to answer your question. I think the top marginal rate on all income should be between 35 and 40 percent. In exchange for the dishonest argument that capitol gains are taxed at 40% (35% corporate rate plus 15% capitol gains), I would lower the corporate rate significantly.

I would also apply Social Security and Medicare taxes to all earned income, not just the first 150K or so. Oh and the inheritance tax stays, although the value of the estate subject to it is certainly negotiable (5 million indexed for inflation sounds fair to me).

In fairness, middle class and poor don't utilize cap gains as income like Buffett or Soros. That said, many in the middle class and most all the poor pay very little to nothing in income tax.

A lot of retirees fall into the middle class, sometimes at the lower end of the spectrum. If they have investment income, they depend heavily on capital gains to get by. Today's near zero percent interest rates make conventional and safe investments like CDs worthless, so people are having to go to riskier investments in order to have an income at retirement.

This doesn't sound fair to me at all. But I guess it always sounds fair to tax others to give to yourself.

The taxes of those who accumulated this wealth has all ready been collected. Why is it fair to have even more wealth taken by the government when you die? Your reasoning is after the government has taken so many bites at the apple, now that you die, the government gets another bite at the apple... because you died?

Fairness, as used by the left, has a very strange and flexible definition.

Fair taxes on the higher income people..... the multi multi billionaires. Is a good line that a certain sector of society buys into. It is good sounding policy for the people that jealous/envious of the super rich. It is something the Democrats have been using for years, tax the rich.

The first two years of Obama's administration, he had a super majority in congress. Any law the president wanted he could of had.

Spending money galore he had plus the bailouts and healthcare. The Republicans could only slow the Dems down. The first two years under Obama was almost a dictatorship with the super majority he had.

So if the Democrats really believe in taxing the rich, they could of passed any tax bill they wanted to. Instead what kind of tax bills were debated, "The Bush Tax Cuts."

The Democrats will not raise the tax rates on the super rich for they also have super rich benefactors that donate to their re-election fund.

It makes for nice verbiage to want to tax the super rich because it gets them some votes.

So who is this candidate trying to fool, does it think it can ride on Obama's tails?

Obama's campaign story is just as telling by what he has not done as well as what he has done. He has not changed the tax rates for the rich when he had the opportunity. So where is the reality in the campaign rhetoric of tax the super rich more.

I believe we would be a better place if everyone paid, directly paid, some tax to the Federal Govt. I mean every person having to write a check every year to the benefit of the Internal Revenue Service. Every person having to take the time to part with money they currently possessed: to give it back. Thus when it came time to discuss raising taxes even the poorest person who had to write a check for $100 would balk at the idea of having to pay $110. The exercise would concentrate the minds of all.

Why is it weird? If I buy $10,000 worth of stocks and sell it ten years later for $20,000, I have to pay capitol gains on $10,000 ($20,000-$10,000). If my father buys $10,000 worth of stocks, makes me the beneficiary of the stocks in his will, and when he dies they are worth $20,000, I could sell them the next day and not pay a penny in capitol gains taxes.

However, cap gains are not indexed to inflation. Your $10K gain over 10 years may only be $8K in money from 10 years ago.

If you have very modest gains on your investments over a long period of time, chances are you simply stood pat with the money you invested due to inflation. However, Uncle Sam still taxes those modest gains.

@MadMan, now I comprehend. The problem for you lefties is not that revenues were better than expected because of intelligent tax policy. Nope, the problem is for us righties that the Wisconsin projections were too low.

Hey I'm just showing some empathy for people who have to plan budgets based on state tax revenue. Why don't the people just say our guesses were a big ol' crapshoot and we were wrong? My "problem" is a politician taking credit for something where none is due.

In other words, show that the increased revenues due to Republican Walker's policies or due to Democrat Obama's. You can't. You can assert that they were, but I'm not gonna believe it.

Economic Forecasts that Have Verified is among the world's thinnest books.

For example, if I bought $1000 (in 1990 dollars) worth of stock in 1990 and it simply kept up with inflation (i.e., NO value added and NO capital gains), then my stock today will be worth 1646.69 in 2010 dollars. Despite no gains made, the government will still tax that $646.69.

If IBM decides not to pay me for my work, I can sue. If I invest my taxed paycheck in the stock market and the stock looses money, I lose money and there is no recourse. Hence the different tax rate. But y absolute favorite is (some) democrats claiming that only the rich can invest in the stock market, and since its rigged, they are risking no money. Also we cant privatize Social Security and invest it in the market because its WAY TO RISKY!!! The assumption that raising taxes on investment will not at all change they way people invest has been disproved over and over, but THIS TIME it will remain static. No one will tell you what a "fair" percentage of tax is, other than "more".

--Doesn't stymie me. And the way you phrase the question is deceptive. First of all only 1.5% (not the 10% you imply) of American families make more than 250K. The ten percent break is somewhere between 100 and 150K.---

I see there is another higher higher moral and ethical code person dispensing graceful hummingbird-related advice above the thick and weighty concerns of the higher grounders. Greetings Hagar, your message rings clear, you have cheered us this late morning.

A lot of commenters seeem to have ignored the Wisconsin portion of the 'tax policy' juxtaposition.

My sixth grader and his whole class - in a small town Wisconsin school district - are getting IPADS next week. The local paper announced that their district was $800,000 over budget this year.

I suspect that we will just not really hear the news of many school districts in Wisconsin having saved millions of dollars now that they are not forced to use WEA Teacher Union Health Insurance (and also having discovered how awesome is the relief from paying full retirement and higher health insurance premiums).

Not only did Walker not raise state taxes - he froze property tax hikes at a time when we are all seeing our house values sink.

In Baldwin's world, equal means what Kurt Vonnegut described so well in his very short story "Harrison Bergeron"...widely available through Google...

In Walker's world, equal means the heretofore privileges of government union workers - enacted by cowardly school boards and legislators from the past - must be reduced moderately to mirror what non public union workers must pay.

A few years ago, Chicago Mag said operating nurses can make $200k/yr. If she's married to a guy making $50k, voila, they're stomping on the necks of the downtrodden.

You do know how a progressive tax system works, don't you? If we bumped the rate on incomes over 250K from 30 to 35%, someone with 300,000 in taxable income (and even if your gross pay is 250K, your taxable income is considerably lower) would pay an extra $2500 in taxes (an extra 5% on the 50K over 250K)

The Left doesn't care about the revenues and is therefore oblivious to Laffer Curve argumetns about "optimum" tax rates. Their focus is on punishing success. Success is always unearned, for them, hence, "You didn't build that."

Charlie Gibson asked Obama in 2008 whether Obama would favor raising capital gains tax rates, even if it brought in less revenue. Obama said yes, because for him it was about "fairness." That is as revealing as it gets. "Fairness" to the Marxist means taking away the money of the successful.

There is an old Irish joke. An Irishman and an American are walking down the road when a rich guy drives by in a fancy convertible, with an attractive blond next to him and pulls into the long driveway of his mansion estate. The American says, "Some day, I'm gonna be that guy." The Irishman says, "Some day I'm gonna get that bastard." That pretty much sums up the Right and Left attitudes toward success.

The Left doesn't care about the revenues and is therefore oblivious to Laffer Curve argumetns about "optimum" tax rates. Their focus is on punishing success. Success is always unearned, for them, hence, "You didn't build that."

Charlie Gibson asked Obama in 2008 whether Obama would favor raising capital gains tax rates, even if it brought in less revenue. Obama said yes, because for him it was about "fairness." That is as revealing as it gets. "Fairness" to the Marxist means taking away the money of the successful.

There is an old Irish joke. An Irishman and an American are walking down the road when a rich guy drives by in a fancy convertible, with an attractive blond next to him and pulls into the long driveway of his mansion estate. The American says, "Some day, I'm gonna be that guy." The Irishman says, "Some day I'm gonna get that bastard." That pretty much sums up the Right and Left attitudes toward success.

Simply not true. At most he had 59 seats in the Senate (and that includes Lieberman, a very doubtful vote). Not enough to overcome a Senate filibuster.

Then how did Obamacare get passed without a filibuster-proof majority?

Exactly how many times has a party had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate?

Yet laws get passed every session. Taxes have been raised and cut many times over the decades.

So either you are admitting that there is insufficient political support for raising taxes, or you are claiming that the current Democrats in power (the President and the Senate) are the least competent set of govt officials ever.

If the first, why complain about the GOP if your preferred solution is so thoroughly discredited?

If the second, why would you want such incompetents to continue to represent your views?

Your advocacy is truly incoherent.

My view is that it is a combination of both: raising taxes is a fully-discredited tactic and the current Democrats are the least competent in the history of the nation.

Viewing the whole thread now, it's a wonder for me to behold so many higher higher ethical and moral coders present. You are already doing the things I am just now starting to think about, and that is a splendid thing for me to see.

And you didn't pay for the stock in 2010 dollars. You paid for it in 1990 dollars.

And? Why does that mean you should pay additional taxes on it? I don't see anything in the Constitution that we must tax capital gains.

You do know how a progressive tax system works, don't you? If we bumped the rate on incomes over 250K from 30 to 35%, someone with 300,000 in taxable income (and even if your gross pay is 250K, your taxable income is considerably lower) would pay an extra $2500 in taxes (an extra 5% on the 50K over 250K)

I also don't see anything in the US Constitution that taxation must be progressive.

So I guess there is no reason whatsoever we can't switch to a flat tax and eliminate double-taxation like capital gains and inheritance as soon as we get spending cut down to where it should be.

[n]Either does the right. The only difference is that the right believes that the optimum rate is less than the current one.

Incorrect.

The right believes that people have a greater right to the money they earn than the govt does.

The right believes that "compassion" using tax revenue is tyranny, and encourages unfortunate behavior and bad choices.

The right believes that there are some necessary govt functions, and taxes to fund those functions are necessary and proper, but that govt (especially federal govt) has arrogated too many rights to itself, and is forcing too many hard workers to pay too much for their involuntary losses of liberty.

For example: spending on education has skyrocketed, but learning achievement is actually declining or staying the same. Wasted money. And since education is local, the existence of a federal Department of Education is inherently wasteful, corrupting, and its elimination would have no deleterious effect on education at all.

OK hummingbird people. I have a question. My wife and I both have brown thumbs, so when we find something hardy that we can't kill, we stick with it.

As far as hummingbirds go, our natural solution has been lantana. Grows great, can't kill it, hummingbirds love it. Do any of you have a better suggestion for us, or have we lucked into a good plant for us and the birds.

Gas UP Food, UP, and that's 1/4 of my friends property tax bill. That could be music lessons. 1 more week of groceries. My retirement so I can afford more than dog food and not a burden on my kids. In 4 years, that's 10 grand. I could use that for college expenses.

If I spend $1, then someone else earns $1. If there is a 5% consumption tax, the government gets $0.05 from the transaction. If there is a 5% income tax, the government get $0.05. How exactly is an income tax different from a consumption tax? The only real difference is who pays. If it's consumption tax, I pay it and it discourages me from purchase. But if it's an income tax, then the seller pays it and it discourages the seller from selling to the same extent. The effects on the transaction are exactly the same.

Additionally, the point of Landsburg's post is that the only way to properly assess the impact of taxes is to consider a world where there are no taxes. This is obviously correct. To assess the affects of gravity, you first have to imagine what would happen if there were no gravity.

To see that capital gains is a double tax, you can see that no matter what rates you set on income and no matter what rate you set on capital gains, as long as both are positive rates, the person who consumes right away, rather than investing, will always have a lower rate of taxation.

You would still be better off than if you buried the money in the backyard.

Great. Instead of investing in the future to build better capital, so my life, my children's lives and so forth, will be better, I should just bury the money and lose purchase power through governmental malfeasance called inflation. That's some strong thinking right there.

The only way to avoid both inflation and capital gains is to consume right now. But this action prevents saving for a rainy day and it prevents from developing better capital, so no progress. How does this make us better off? Especially in the long run?

And you didn't pay for the stock in 2010 dollars. You paid for it in 1990 dollars.

That's the point. A dollar in 2010 doesn't buy as much as it did in 1990, but the tax code doesn't account for that. The tax code treats the reduced purchasing power exactly the same as it does gains. Meaning that even though the nominal value of the stocks in 2010 is $1646.69, this has the same exact purchasing power (real value) as $1000.00 in 1990, but the government treats it as though it is $1646.69 in 2010 purchasing power and taxes me on $646.69.

To see that capital gains is a double tax, you can see that no matter what rates you set on income and no matter what rate you set on capital gains, as long as both are positive rates, the person who consumes right away, rather than investing, will always have a lower rate of taxation.

Huh, If I make $2.00 taxed at 25% and immediately spend the extra $1.50, my tax rate is 25%. If instead of spending the whole $1.50 I invest $1.00 and double that dollar over some amount of time, cash in my stock and pay 10% capital gains, I have made $3.00 (The original $2.00 plus $1.00 in capital gains) and paid $.35 in tax, for a tax rate of 11.6% (even though I have paid more taxes than the person who immediately spent her take home pay).

Edit: To see that capital gains is a double tax, you can see that no matter what rates you set on income and no matter what rate you set on capital gains, as long as both are positive rates, the person who consumes right away, rather than investing, will always have a lower rate of taxation.

This should read "as long as the capital gains rates is positive, the person who consumes right away, rather than investing, will always have a lower rate of taxation.

Does the govt deserve a portion of every transaction just because it is the govt?

No.

The govt does not have a right to anything, much less an automatic percentage of every transaction.

Various politicians have used an implied mandate to impose taxes through all sorts of channels. Statists and socialist/communists love to take a small percentage of every transaction because they like to believe the fantasy that if they prevent any possible escape behavior, then taxation won't negatively affect behavior.

This, of course, is stupid.

But go ahead, Freder: explain by what right the govt should automatically get a portion of every single instance of someone earning money.

With a 10% cap gains you pay an additional tax of $.1, for a total tal bill of $.6. Your tax rate is then 20%.

And I see you still don't understand what is happening with the investment in stocks. The point is that since the $646.69 is taxed, as capital gains, my purchase power is LESS than $1646.69 in 2010 than in1990. Meaning not only have I not gained, but because of a poor tax code I have less in 2010 than in 1990.

The Tax Foundation estimated that the Buffet Tax Rule would raise 36.7 billion dollars in additional tax revenue. In other words, it would reduce the current year's deficit by 3.67%.

Haha, no, try an order of magnitude smaller. That Tax Foundation estimate must be a 10-year projection. The Buffett Tax Rule would raise about $4.7 billion per year. That's less than 0.5% of the projected budget deficit for next year. It's an unserious proposal from an unserious president.

I would be willing to go to a uniform 40% tax rate on earned and unearned income in exchange for the following:

1) A Constitutional amendment holding Federal government spending below 20% of GDP except in time of declared war.

2) A Constitutional amendment taking the vote away from any net consumer of taxes. This includes those on welfare (other than Social Security which they paid for previously), government employees, and government contractors and their employees.

3) Abolishing withholding and requiring people to write one check a year to the IRS.

Instead of arguing about which tax scheme is moral or legal or immoral or illegal, why don't you just look at the results of each scheme and choose the one that promotes prosperity? Isn't that "pragmatism"?

Contrast California, Illinois and New York with Wisconsin, Ohio, Puerto Rico. Raising taxes does not cause prosperity.

Revenue at a tax rate of 100% is $0 or mighty close to it. Do you disagree?

And if they do disagree then pick 110%. There is some number where it makes no sense to keep on working.

For me, that number has to be somewhere around 75% - 80%, property taxes and sales taxes included. Above that I can no longer afford to buy gasoline to drive to work and cannot get food for my wife and son except by leaving the job market and going on welfare plus food stamps.

it's called the migrant labor phenomena...when you need 100 pickers in the field and you only can afford 50, well you cut the 50's wages in half and then you can afford 100.

The wonderful thing about this bit is that (s)he clearly understands she's railing against cruel reality. You need 100 people to pick the field. You can't afford them. Either wages come down or the field goes un-picked. There's no villain in this parable, and no solution that doesn't involve wages coming down or produce rotting on the vine.

Why would you think the Laffer Curve is insane? It's settled science. If you let R(x) be the tax revenue function and x be the rate of taxation (be a number between 0 and 1), it's clear that R(0) = R(1) = 0. If no taxes are collected, no tax revenue will exist. If all income is collected as taxes, no one will work, so no tax revenue will exist. Additionally, it is reasonable to assume that this function is continuous and without too crazy of assumptions you can assume that it's even differentiable. There doesn't seem to be any reasonable assumption to be made such that R''(x) is positive for any x between 0 and 1.

In other words, for those who think the Laffer Curve is insane doesn't understand economics, doesn't understand human nature, or doesn't understand math, or doesn't understand any of the three.

when you need 100 pickers in the field and you only can afford 50, well you cut the 50's wages in half and then you can afford 100.

First, what do you think happens if you cut wages by 50%, then double the number of workers? The type of worker that will accept 50% less wages will certainly be at least 50% less productive than the current workers. Otherwise, employers will definitely do this. Why would they leave money on the table like that? Would you?

Interestingly, this is how we know that there is no wage gap between races and gender. All races and both genders get paid exactly the same for performing the exact same work. If one of the races or one of the gender performed the same work, then employers would exclude from hiring the more expensive races and gender. For example, the wage gap between men and women is supposedly 28%. If this were true, employers would be fools to not fire all their men and hire all women. Instantly, their profits could be increased.

But back to the point at hand. No single employer can simply cut by half wages of their employees is because other employers will hire tham for more than 50% there current wages. In fact, wages of current employees cannot be cut at all unless the work itself becomes less valuable. Consumers and customers, not employers, determine how valuable any work is. Say you're a field owner paying pickers $100/day and you're making $105/day per worker (assuming a 5% profit on the labor). If you cut wages to $50/day in order to pocket an additional $50/day per worker, other field owners will simply offer $60/day, then you will have no more workers. In fact, since you value their labor at $105/day, there will be a bidding war on wages till the cost of labor rises back to at least $100/day.

First, what do you think happens if you cut wages by 50%, then double the number of workers? The type of worker that will accept 50% less wages will certainly be at least 50% less productive than the current workers. Otherwise, employers will definitely do this. Why would they leave money on the table like that?

They don't. Lindsey was making this point in connection with migrant labour, i.e. the locals (American natives) are too expensive so they import migrant labour (e.g. from Mexico) to do the work for less. Firing the natives and hiring foreigners is exactly what they do, precisely because the natives cost more money than they're worth. Anecdotally, the cheap foreign labour is also higher quality than the natives, despite the lower price point.

Then she might as well complain about technology. Immigrants are nothing compared to the job destroying powers of machines. Using machines to lower labor costs is no different from using immigrants or off shoring to lower labor costs.